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STEM learning doesn't end in the classroom (VIDEO)

Internships touted to build resumes, careers

By Kori Tuitt, ktuitt@lowellsun.com

Updated:
05/11/2018 08:31:52 AM EDT

Thermo Fisher Scientific offered internships to high school and college students this past summer, giving them hands-on experience in the world of STEM. From left are Catherine Butler, Tewksbury Memorial High School student; Stephanie Walker, senior human resources manager at Thermo Fisher; Jessika Fabiano, senior manager of Early Talent Programs at Thermo Fisher; and Stephanie Tam, Tewksbury Memorial High School senior.

TEWKSBURY -- Opening the door for students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math starts in the classroom, but shouldn't end there.

That's why the Greater Lowell Workforce Development Board has been working with the state's Executive Office of Education to offer internships with STEM businesses to high school students.

A roundtable discussion was held at Tewksbury Memorial High School Thursday with Secretary of Education Jim Peyser, educators, students and employers.

"The reality is, students learn in a variety of different places, including outside the classroom, and some of the most engaging and some of the most transformative experiences often happen outside the four walls of the school," Peyser said.

Thermo Fisher Scientific provided summer internships to seven students last year for its pilot program, three of which attend TMHS.

Stephanie Tam, a senior at TMHS, said the four-week experience was extremely valuable in offering both professional and character development. She will be returning to the program this summer, which has expanded to 10 students and will be five weeks long.

"These internships are what really reinforce your past learning and connect them to your future. I had the opportunity to sit down with a lot of various engineers," she said. "I knew I wanted to go into STEM, but it really did well with trying to get me integrated with all the systems of the company and really get exposed to all the possibilities.

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Catherine Butler, was another TMHS senior to take advantage of the program. She said she learned about various things, being educated on the field of dosimetry, which relates to radiation therapy, and learning how to present information.

"We used our knowledge of just mean, median and mode, and that helped them," she said. "So, it worked both ways."

Michael Glass, vice president of Global Talent at Thermo Fisher, said he has a personal connection to working on efforts like this one because his youngest child is a junior in high school also interested in STEM.

Michael Glass, vice president of Global Talent at Thermo Fisher Scientific, speaks about the success of its pilot internship program during a roundtable discussion at Tewksbury Memorial High School Thursday. SUN /KORI TUITT

"It's not just about the projects, it's really about helping these students understand about operating in corporate America and understanding that STEM is not just about research and development," Glass said.

Two students from Lowell High School were also at the roundtable discussion to speak on the unique internship opportunities they have explored this year. Unlike the Tewksbury High students, their internships are completed during the school day, amounting to about three hours a week.

Isaac Petruzziello, a senior at LHS, is interning with the National Parks Service under the safety manager working on engineering. He said the work has been incredibly intriguing. He has had to put together a budget, work with various types of equipment and craft a proposal.

"The proposal was legitimate work that was actually getting submitted to higher ups, getting evaluated and that sort of encapsulates my whole experience, if you ask me," he said.

Brendan Cronin, also a senior at LHS, interns at Watermark Environmental Inc., where he gets hands-on experience and has moved throughout various departments.

"I get to really learn how the company operates in a real-world business environment and surely enough that will help me in the future, perform in a company," he said.

Peyser emphasized the importance of building these connections with schools and businesses to provide these specialized educational experiences.

"Having the opportunity to actually work in a business in a field that you're interested in, in particular in the STEM fields, is so important to opening up opening up some of these eyes to what is possible, to what their future could look like and why this really matters," Peyser said.

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